When she's undisturbed from her sleep while you change her into her school uniform, with her mouth slightly opened for a little toothbrush to go in, you know she's dead tired. Hmm... she slept quite early last night, I thought.

But when 小雨滴滴在小雨 as we walked to our car, 阿福 with her zzzing in my arms, she uttered "Raining!", awakened all at once by the tiny rain drops. That's my 小雨。

The hypermart started playing National Day songs today.

The smell of the supple shiitake mushrooms from overnight soaking diffused out as I lifted the wok cover. Therapeutic. Especially when they came from your Mom's kitchen to your kitchen. Yes she's my supplier of dried shiitake mushrooms.

I've chopped spring onions several times but had never teared once. Today, my tears came down uncontrollably to the extent that I need to stop midway to wipe them away and rest my eyes a little. As if crying for our green home.

Today, I was quite obedient. Aside from using chicken stock and mushroom soaking liquid in place of water, lesser cooking oil and sesame oil, I followed pretty much of the recipe for the minced pork & tofu, from wiffy the Noob Cook. O for a 小雨-friendly meal, I skipped the chilli padi of course.

A first experience simmering the soft tofu slices in my wok...

A first experience simmering tofu slices in the wok...

About 3 minutes later, the tofu slices had pretty much submerged in the broth mixture.

3-minutes' simmering minced pork and tofu in the wok

Loved this dish. One of the rare times I cooked protein without velveting but they were just as soft and tender.

For instructions, please refer to recipe provided by wiffy, the Noob Cook.

*********************************************************************************************************** The second dish of radish sprout & shiitake mushroom stir-fry turned out... ﻿﻿bitter﻿﻿(hm I wasn't listening to Tanya Chua's songs ya). Yes the sprouts "infected" the mushrooms, so everything turned bitter. Sorry to my豆苗-lover and mylittle shiitake mushroom-lover. Guess the bitterness was due to blanching the fine sprout a little too long, which also led to a loss of crisp.

Radish sprout & shiitake mushroom stir-fry

A little oyster sauce did help to mitigate the bitter taste though. The recipe is the same as that forbroccoli & shiitake mushroom stir-frybut I'll probably skip blanching for this at my next attempt.

Had run out of rice so we had spaghetti to eat with the dishes tonight. Glad that 小雨 still finished her bowl of spaghetti with a little of everything. The bitterness of the sprout and mushroom was overshadowed by the tasty minced pork and tofu, thanks to wiffy.

Somehow, I was reminded of Nick Vujicic, who was born with tetra-amelia syndrome, without four limbs.Whether the couple hadn't brought the twin boy back with them because he had Down's syndrome or a congenital heart condition, Nick's story seemed to convey this message to me:

~ Never give up on your child, have faith in them. ~

Tonight, I decided to do Nick's comic look from his book "Dream Big" in my bowl of yoghurt. The facial details were too fine to be pieced using the waffle flakes but I decided to put in effort and not give up...

Nick Vujicic, art-in-Yang's-yoghurt #37

So I finished this in the end - Nick with a pinkie-strawberry hat. It didn't totally resemble his comic look and the colors from the waffle have smudged into the yoghurt but that kind of added some shade and a little rugged look to the art.